Why it works: Chicken and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓
Fried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wipe the chicken pieces dry and season with salt.
Roll each piece in flour to coat.
Fry and steam
In a large skillet, heat the bacon fat and lard over medium heat.
Add the chicken pieces to the hot grease and cook slowly, turning until browned.
Add a little water, cover, and let steam until cooked through.
Serve
Serve with gravy made from the drippings.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,559 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through as it fries and steams.
- Flour
- Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat and crisps the skin.
- Bacon fat
- Carries heat to the chicken and adds savory flavor to the crust.
- Lard
- Fries the chicken evenly and adds richness to the crisp coating.
The step that matters
Cooking the chicken slowly in hot fat until browned. Frying over medium heat lets the coating brown without burning before the thick meat cooks through. Adding water and covering then steams the chicken so the interior finishes cooking gently.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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